Vietnam and Belgium have abundant potentials and opportunities to expand their cooperation in trade, investment, and other fields, according to a senior Belgian diplomat.
Belgian Ambassador to Vietnam Huber Cooreman said that in late March 2010, a delegation of Belgian economists and scientists will visit Vietnam and on the occasion, Belgium will convene a meeting of investors attending the Asia-Europe Meeting Forum on fisheries and organise visits to the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong to transfer its new agriculture techniques.
Next year, the two countries will also coordinate in a programme to build up trademarks for Vietnam ’s shrimp as well as to form models of cooperative for shrimp breeders in the Mekong delta region.
In addition, a series of cooperation programmes in education and bio-technology will be carried out in the coming time.
According to the Belgian Ambassador, the 2007-2010 cooperation programme focuses on environmental hygiene and public administration, covering human resource training, private sector development, and urbanisation in combination with climate change.
Belgium has assisted Vietnam to develop its fisheries sector with a project to build a research centre in the Mekong delta region to provide Vietnamese farmers with production techniques to meet quality standards for export to the EU and other markets.
Belgium is Vietnam ’s fourth largest export market in the EU and is the seventh largest among EU investors in Vietnam .
However, the country’s total investment capital in Vietnam was still modest with only 80 million USD poured into 27 projects.
According to the Belgian Embassy, nearly 90 Belgian businesses have opened their representative offices and branches or are running joint ventures in the Southeast Asian country.
Two-way trade between the two countries unceasingly increased over the past years, from 377 million USD in 1999 to 1.4 billion in 2008. However, the first six months of 2009 saw a year-on-year drop of 25 percent in bilateral trade to 395 million EUR due to the global economic crisis. Vietnam earned only 311 million EUR from exports to Belgium and imported 84 million EUR worth of commodities from this EU country.
Vietnam ’s key exports to Belgium include coffee, textile and garment, footwear, fisheries, fine arts and furniture products. It imports from Belgium valuable metals, chemicals, medicines and equipment.
Vietnam now is the only Asian country that is prioritised for the Belgian Government’s official development assistance programme. Belgium pledged an ODA funding of 32 million EUR for Vietnam during the 2007-2010 period./.